Cake Faults

This week's small batch of chocolate cupcakes turned out nicely. The previous two weeks, using a different recipe scaled down, did not. I read about cake faults to note that

Fault — cake sinking in the center

Causes

1. Too much aeration. This may be caused by:
(a) Too much sugar used in the recipe. This can be detected by excessive crust color and a sticky seam running in the shape of a U.
(b) Too much baking powder. Difficult to detect because it can be confused with (c).
(c) Overbeating of fat/sugar/egg batter prior to adding flour.

2. Undercooked. This can easily be detected by the presence of a wet seam just below the surface of the top crust.

3. Knocking in oven prior to cakes being set. If during cooking when all the ingredients are in a fluid state, a cake gets a knock or disturbance (such as a draught of cold air) some collapse may take place which will result in the center of the cake caving in.

4. Too much liquid. This is easy to detect because, firstly the sides will tend to cave in as well as the top, and if the cake is cut a seam will be discovered immediately above the bottom crust. Cakes containing too much liquid do not show this fault until they are removed from the oven. During baking, the excess moisture is in the form of steam and actually contributes to the aeration of the cake. On cooling, this steam condenses into water which sinks to the bottom of the cake, collapsing the texture by so doing.

I didn't see the behavior described for #4, so that's not it. I was careful not to knock them, so not #3 either. I really doubt #2 as well, just based on the clean toothpick. The cupcakes rose, and then fell, so I think it's #1. I don't think it's a because the cupcakes weren't as sweet as most. I didn't use any egg in the scaled down version, so either I did too much with the butter and sugar (by hand? really?), or too much baking soda (no baking powder in that recipe either). Or maybe it was leaving out the egg? Maybe more protein would hold the risen shape and not collapse?

Since the first recipe didn't scale down well, and I'm enjoying testing recipes designed for small batches, I don't think it matters. But it's nice to know what causes this sort of problem too.

Why Do I Have to Learn the Hard Way?

Why do I have to learn this the hard way? My previous blog host shut down, and I promise I didn't see any large notices, but most of the posts are backed up in MacJournal. It'll take me a while to push everything here (sans comments), and I'll have to re-create the pages that were outside of the post hierarchy, but here goes!

Windshield Cleaning

The inside of my car windshield gets filthy (and I don't smoke!), so I tried making my own windshield cleaner from equal parts of rubbing alcohol, ammonia, and water. It worked, I suppose, although there were some streaks.

So I decided to work on the streaking angle. This time, I used an old sock with a hole and water. After I rubbed the windshield, I went over it with a squeegee to remove all traces of water. Guess what? That worked really well!

So pick the window cleaner recipe you like best or use water; my best advice is to use a squeegee immediately afterwards!

Tinkering with XSLT again

The cool tricks for today (since I wanted to update my syllabus) include replacements and improvements to what I did before. Since TestXSLT is PowerPC-only, I had to find an alternative method. I'm using the command 'xsltproc --output Syllabus.html opmlsyllabus2html.xsl Syllabus.opml' where Syllabus.opml is a file I edit in OmniOutliner and save as OPML, and where opmlsyllabus2html.xsl is a modified version of beigeopml2web.xsl from Buzz, as noted before. Runs like a charm on Lion!

Since I was mucking about, I decided to try to insert the current date for "Last Modified" line, and this time I found a wonderful hint to insert the current date with XSLT (see the top reply). For a brief overview of the XSLT date options, see this reference. While playing around with formatting the date, I ended up without a space where I wanted one, so I had to look for a way to insert a single space too (see the first hint in the last reply). It works, better than ever! I just needed TestXSLT to stop working to motivate me to try again.

Vacation

Day 1 (December 3)

Our flight to Fort Lauderdale was early enough that I initially set my alarm for 4:30 am. However, I didn't fall asleep as early as I wanted, so I changed it to 4:45 am. Despite those sleepy intentions, I was wide awake at 2:30 am, so I got out of bed at 4 am, knowing it would be a long day.

Day 3 (December 5)

We went to Fort Zachary Taylor Historic State Park at lunchtime. I went to the concession stand and asked for the cuban mix without cheese or mayo. I was told that special requests would not be honored, and if I had food allergies, I should just get the turkey sandwich. I don't want a turkey sandwich! I want ham and pulled pork and pickles, the yummy parts of a cuban mix! I really didn't like the dismissive tone of "just get a turkey sandwich," so I biked to the closest deli instead. For 75¢ more, I got a cuban mix with chips and a drink! I apologized for my food allergies, and was told, "Hon, if you're going to eat it, you should have it exactly the way you want it!" Wow, what a change from my previous ordering attempt! I am so glad I went to the Courthouse Deli instead! That one nice comment made me Very Glad I went there; I had pedaled over there because I was annoyed, but those kind words made me happy I had picked that deli.

Day 6 (December 8)

The best part of today is that I had a really good nap! This is somewhat amazing since fire alarm testing was in progress. The alarms weren't long, so I just went back to sleep every time.

The Mustard Stain

I like mustard as a condiment. However, when the top flies off the mustard container while I’m squeezing, I get more mustard than even I wanted. All over my shirt, too. Eventually my shirt recovered; I think soaking overnight in detergent (well, oxygen cleaner) was the biggest help. If this happens to you, check out <a href=“http://web.extension.illinois.edu/stain/staindetail.cfm?ID=72”>one</a> of <a href=“http://home.howstuffworks.com/how-to-remove-mustard-stains1.htm”>these</a> references.

web100clt for Mac

# install the latest Developer Tools
cd /Developer
mkdir Source
cd Source/
curl -O http://software.internet2.edu/sources/ndt/ndt-3.6.4.tar.gz
cd ndt-3.6.4.tar.gz
cd ndt-3.6.4
tar -zxf ndt-3.6.4.tar.gz
cd ndt-3.6.4
./configure 2>&1 | tee configure.out
make 2>&1 | tee make.out
find . -name web100clt
file src/web100clt
sudo cp src/web100clt /usr/local/bin